


if you love somebody (you should tell somebody)

by ascience



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Borussia Dortmund, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 10:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5964349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascience/pseuds/ascience
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco has never been good at lying. It's a bit of a pain in the ass when the truth is the deciding factor in finding your soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you love somebody (you should tell somebody)

**Author's Note:**

> AU: You can't lie to your soulmate.

When Marco signs his contract with Gladbach, they tell him to learn to lie well.

It’s even written in the fine print, though phrased much more diplomatically than what Meyer says to him in person. At least five sessions with a certified mendacist in five weeks – that’s definitely not something Ahlen would ever have cared about.

Then again, this is the Bundesliga with it’s all-eyes-on-you policy, and it’s been some time since Marco last kicked about on a gravel field, where he was always the one to fess up when the ball flew through a neighbour’s window.

If anyone had asked him, Marco would have had a hard time denying that he had a bad feeling about the mendacity lessons, which probably proves just how much he needed them. Meyer gruffly tells him to take the lessons seriously, not sounding like he is planning to stay around to watch the progress.

Marco wants to ask him about that, but something tells him that Meyer is someone who’s learnt to lie pretty well.

So Marco swivels the pen over the dotted line under the contract and this, for sure, is the truth.

It’s more than amazing to even just train with the club, wear the jersey, and Marco tells everyone who’s willing to listen.

He’s the only one who has to absolve his mendacity lessons at the moment which only earns him sympathetic pats on the back from his teammates in return.

“Would you consider yourself a good liar?” the mendacist, a Sigmund Freud looking guy called Bremer, asks before Marco can even shake his hand, but Marco doesn’t hesitate either.

“No.”

Bremer raises his eyebrow.

“You wanna write that down in your notepad?” Marco asks with a challenging smile. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Does that surprise you?”

“No. It’s fine. The other guys would just never admit it.”

Bremer still walks over to his desk, takes a pencil and writes a short note.

“Yeah, well. I’m not a good liar,” Marco replies and flops down in the chair opposite from Bremer.

The following weeks, Bremer makes Marco do a variety of exercises, mostly practising the weirdest contentions, and it’s all useless in Marco’s eyes, but at least it’s funny useless.

To be honest though, he’d rather have some lessons on how to find your soulmate if you can’t lie for shit to _anyone_. At all. And – because he can’t lie for shit – Marco complains about it to Bremer in the last lesson when asked for an evaluation.

Bremer taps his index finger against his chin. “So you don’t feel like this course helped you with mendacity?”

“I’m not sure, “ Marco says and tries, “I love your tie.”

Bremer looks down at himself. His tie is orange with a red pattern. He doesn’t blink an eye because he probably learnt to keep his face straight at his bullshit two week mendacist seminar, but Marco knows what Bremer is thinking anyway when he signs the attestation and hands it to Marco.

Marco has already left the room, clamping the attestation between two fingers, when he can’t hold himself back anymore and sticks his head back through the door to Bremer’s office.

“The tie,” Marco says, “it’s really fucking ugly. I’m sorry, but—“

“Get out,” Bremer answers, smiling.

In the end, the attestation doesn’t even seem to matter anymore, because Meyer is gone and some day Frontzeck is gone, too, and Favre lets Bremer go.

Marco learns that scoring goals doesn’t come quite as hard to him as lying does.

\--

Marco becomes fast friends with Marc and Dante, which might be strange since both of them can lie well, but rarely ever do or want to. So Marco sees himself on the opposite end of the spectrum and wonders how easy it must be for the two others to find someone to fall in love with.

They talk about it sometimes, especially after Bremer has been fired.

The three of them are lying on their backs on the grass, heads stuck together. If this was a teen movie, the camera would zoom in on them from above, showing them pointing at the sky or sharing earphones.

“Do you think they learn to lie at other clubs as well?” Marco asks, without ulterior motives, not _yet_.

“Why did we do it? To be frank.”

“To learn to lie to your soulmate,” Dante answers, but it doesn’t sound like he’s buying much of it either.

“This what Favre told you?”

“Frontzeck actually.”

“Well, I think it’s a load of bullshit. I mean, if you meet your soulmate, you’ll have trouble lying to them either way, so what’s the point in the weird-ass card exercises that Bremer made us do?”

“Dunno.” Marco says and shrugs as well as one can shrug when lying on the ground. “You’re even able to lie to your soulmate with enough training.”

“But why would you want to? Lie to your soulmate? It makes no sense.” Marc takes a deep breath, signifying the mind-blowing, ground-breaking discovery he’s going to share with them now. “I think it’s to keep us from being exploited. Like if someone walks up to you and says they’re your soulmate, but they only want your money, then you have to be sure you’re able to lie to them if they’re not actually your soulmate.”

Marco thinks about it for a second, and considers the stories he’s heard – of a player who couldn’t lie to a ref and fucked up his team’s relegation battle in a very noble and selfless way, of a reporter who found his soulmate in the middle of a live interview and got the story of his life – just minor things in the world of football.

“I still dunno. If anyone wanted my money, there’d be easier ways than to try and get into my pants. Just, like, walk into my flat when I forget to lock it again and take my cash.”

Marc and Dante start laughing at the same time, although Marco had been serious to some extent.

“You’re so stupid, Marco,” Dante says, rips out a bunch of grass blades and drops them on Marco’s face.

\--

Marco’s story in Gladbach gets cut short. Or maybe it ends at exactly the right time, because he gets the offer, he takes the offer. Business and everything, and in more than one way it’s also like coming home, but coming home to a renovated house.

“You’re leaving, right?” Marc asks, nervously opening and closing the Velcro of his gloves again and again.

For the first time, looking into Marc’s eyes, Marco thinks, I could lie to him. I definitely could lie to him right now.

“Yes.”

He doesn’t.

Marc will wait his own turn and find out what it’s like, Marco knows that. Mendacity lessons or not, sometimes you just nod and say thank you when destiny comes knocking.

\--

Marco falls in and out of love with every guy he meets on his new team. It has a lot to do with him not being able to lie, and many at Dortmund, out of confusion or appreciation, not lying back.

He gets a reputation around that easily, and when the first Christmas after the transfer rolls around, every single present he gets is a Mendax watch, one of those pocket lie detectors.

“You’ll figure it out,” Lukasz tells him, his hand lightly resting on Kuba’s back.

Marco eyes them and he would, petulantly, bet Lukasz never had to take part in mendacity lessons.

Granted, Lukasz is good at lying. When he’s not talking to Kuba. That one was probably easy to figure out.

Marco throws his mendaxmeter against the wall of the locker room in a childish fit, one of his fifteen mendaxmeters at least, and the only problem about that is that Mats and Kehli see him do it. When they interrogate him, it’s no wonder Marco tells the truth about his worries.

Kehli talks to Marco for ten minutes in a low, reassuring voice, sometimes so low Marco can’t even hear him right. Then he sends Marco to Klopp, an experience Marco could have missed out on, to be honest.

“What’s wrong?” Klopp asks, and Marco rather stares at the print of his sweatshirt than at his face.

“Kehli said I should talk to you about soulmates.”

Klopp nods and grunts. “Do you want to talk?”

“...No,” Marco replies hesitantly, trying to make a truth sound like an almost-lie.

“You young guys talk an awful lot about soulmates.” Klopp waves his hand between Marco and the door, probably implying the rest of the team. “My advice? Get that out of your head and focus on football, is what I say. Have you ever even met any soulmates?”

“Yeah.” So much for team awareness.

“Hm. Damn the Internet. When I was young, it was all rumours and you were glad if anyone at all liked you back.”

“It’s still that way, to be honest. Lots of people don’t get or don’t want a soulmate.”

Klopp sighs and claps his hands together, conversation over.

“Son, what did I say about focusing on football? Get your ass back on the pitch.”

Marco does, because after all it’s the one thing he’s good at.

Well, of course, there’s also Mario.

Mario is something else. Something else, because he’s neither here nor there for Marco, like a lie by omission. Klopp doesn’t complain about soulmates anymore when he sees them play.

Unfortunately, the truth is more difficult than that.

\--

“Fuck off,” Marco hisses and tears his arm out of Mats’ grip. He stumbles some steps further, pushing at everything that’s blocking his way.

But Marco doesn’t have any plan of where to go except out of here, so Mats is quicker to catch up with him again and hold him back by his shoulder.

“You need to calm down, Marco,” Mats says soothingly.

Marco whips around, ducking away from Mats’ grip. He meets Mats’ eyes and the worry in them is so obvious that Marco has to look away. He stares at a point behind Mats, trying hard to keep the anger inside him alive, because he just wants to be fucking angry right now. He _deserves_ to be angry right now.

“Don’t tell me to calm down.”

Mats takes a step back when Marco raises his hand against him, but there’s still that worry painted onto his face.

“It’s no use being angry at Mario. You can’t hate him for it,” Mats says in a low voice.

“He lied to me, Mats. He looked me in the eye and flat-out _lied_ to me. Don’t you get it?”

Mats looks at Marco wide-eyed, and it causes Marco to backtrack on what he just said and he thinks, Oh fuck.

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” Mats says, “I didn’t know you thought – I mean, you – you will find your soulmate. If it’s not him, it’s not him.”

Of course that is what Mats thinks about, the hopeless romantic. Standing there, thinking he’s got the world all figured out, because when he was six years old, he realised people fall in love sometimes.

“It’s not about him being my soulmate or not,” Marco replies. “I couldn’t care less about that.”

“But you said-“

“He lied to me. You don’t lie to people about something like this transfer and that has shit to do with being soulmates and everything to do with having some respect for your friends.”

“But you thought he might be, didn’t you?” Mats asks carefully, kneading his hands. “Your soulmate.”

Marco snorts and wipes his hand over his face, over his eyes. “I’m not going to fall for that shit again, trust me.”

“You need to be more careful,” Mats offers, and Marco has an idea where this lecture is likely to end.

“You sound like Kehli. Next thing you’re going to tell me _all_ about how important it is to lie.” Marco can’t hear it anymore. It used to be something nice when he was a kid, being truthful.

A hint of pride flashes through Mats’ eyes when he’s compared to Basti, then it’s replaced by something less easy to read.

“But you do realise, it’s important, don’t you? You can’t unravel yourself over every guy you meet, just because your mendaxmeter runs amok every time you even think about lying.”

Marco automatically wraps his fingers around the Mendax watch on his wrist. He doesn’t have to look at it to know his heart is beating too fast.

“How can you –“ Marco starts, but stifles himself, pressing his fingernails into his palms. “I don’t fall in love. It’s called being friends with someone, Mats, and you should try it sometimes!”

Mats speaks up before Marco has finished his sentence and the words cut through the air like a knife. He doesn’t say them harshly, but earnestly.

“At first,” he says, “I thought you might be my soulmate. Because of how bad you were at lying to me. Before I realised I could lie to you easy.”

It hits Marco where it hurts most, the spot in his heart that’s sure he will never find his soulmate because he’ll blink and miss and run after a wrong guy. Fucking Bremer and his fucking idea of how to lie. No thanks.

“I don’t know who Mario is for you,” Mats continues, “but he isn’t here and he isn’t your soulmate. Everyone tells lies. It’s you who thinks they don’t.”

_Truth._

Marco looks at Mats and his unruly curls and the careful expression on his face, and for a second, Marco believes. Because he wants to believe, because it would all be so much easier if he just could.

A second is enough for him to push Mats back against the wall and lay his lips on Mats’.

Mats lets the first touches happen, then he softly sighs and pushes against Marco’s chest.

“Marco,” he whispers, “No.”

Marco lets his head fall on Mats’ shoulder and Mats threads his fingers into Marco’s hair.

“Tell me a lie,” Marco says, moving his lips against Mats’ shirt. There’s a tremble of exhaustion in his voice.

“I’m in love with you.”

“Haha. Fuck you. Another one.”

“We don’t have a chance without Mario.”

“That’s –“

“A lie, Marco. A lie.” Mats cradles Marco’s head and lifts it so he has to look him in the eyes. “The worst lie I’ve ever told.”

\--

Marco puts that whole “finding someone” business on the back burner, one of the smarter decisions in his life. After almost thinking that Lewy... never mind _that_ , but after some confusion, Marco’s realised that getting his hopes up with every guy he can’t lie to only very marginally narrows down the population where he could find his soulmate.

It doesn’t matter though, because whatever it is that happens the next summer when Auba transfers to Dortmund, it’s definitely at first sight.

“Guten Tag,” Auba greets Marco the first day after the introduction, shaky accent on the attempted German, and Marco greets back in English just as badly.

“I’m Marco,” he adds, and he’s never felt dumber than he does now, grinning at the new guy, drawing his hand through his undyed hair.

“Auba,” Auba replies and holds out his hand.

Marco shakes it, and Auba’s sleeve slides down to reveal a watch, not unlike the one that Marco is wearing. Auba’s is large and golden though and has about twenty different buttons.

“Is that-?“ Marco asks and points at his wrist. “It looks really cool.”

“Ah, thanks!” Auba answers, his eyes widening with glee, “Got it for my last birthday.”

“It’s like one step below an actual lie detector, isn’t it? Jesus, that’s some style! My Mendax got nothing against that.”

“It’s, uhm, telling the time mostly? I don’t know what half the options even mean. It should just say lie or truth in big red letters.” Auba laughs.

Marco grabs Auba’s arm to inspect the golden miniature computer, a second before he notices that taking the limb of someone who you’ve only just met is a bit beyond personal boundaries.

“Sorry,” Marco winces and carefully puts the arm back to where he got it from. “Nice arm – I mean, nice _watch_. Nice watch.”

Auba nods, toothy smile, and Marco nods back, because they’re on the same wave length somehow, and maybe he’s picking out secret handshake sequences in his mind already. A guy can dream, right?

They stand in front of each other for an awkward, endearing while, just smiling and nodding, and Auba is probably waiting for Marco to do something since Auba’s the new guy. However, all Marco can think about is what kind of bullshit he would say if he dared to open his mouth right now. Truth and everything.

“Your Mendax is blinking,” Auba provides helpfully.

Marco wants to bang his head against a wall.

“Yeah, that, uh, happens quite often,” Marco explains, chewing the inside of his cheek, “I’m really bad at lying and this brand is too sensitive sometimes. I know it’s weird, but it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t just go and kiss anyone over it, you know?”

Marco squints at Auba, hoping he won’t think it’s too weird, and bites his lips, trying to keep himself from spilling anything else. Like that he thinks that the star shaven into Auba’s hair is mighty awesome.

“Bad at lying?” Auba asks and laughs. “That’s alright. And thanks.”

“You’re welc- Oh. I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“I see what you mean. Your haircut is nice too, though.”

“Thanks,” Marco replies, feeling the heat in his cheek rise.

Auba says something in French then, something Marco obviously can’t understand, and then there’s another moment of expectant staring, before Marcel squeezes himself through the hallway between them.

“Guys, is this a football club or some dating game? Because if it’s the latter, we’re gonna have to talk about the line-up again.”

Marcel nods into the direction of the training pitch, and Marco and Auba get on their way as well.

“Hope you like it here,” Marcel says to Auba and sneaks – invisible to Auba – his hand to Marco’s watch.

Marcel presses a button on the side of the watch and turns off the consistent blinking, throwing Marco a look with wagging eyebrows. Marco knows what this is about, but he still rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue, before he catches up with Auba again.

They do the warm-up together, if you can call chatting and repeatedly falling over a ‘warm-up’ in the strictest sense.

Auba talks a lot in French, often sounding like he’s shy about saying it, but Marco doesn’t understand a single word of it and just nods benevolently.

“Is French a language of lies?” Marco genuinely asks after one training, because it’s a question that’s on his mind, okay, and he’d like to get it out of the way.

“What the literal fuck,” Kehli answers, “Thank God I’m retiring soon.”

A whole bunch of _really_ stupid shit happens the following season, top of the list being Marco getting injured and missing the World Cup. There’s no punch line to this joke, except maybe that Marco successfully lies to quiet a lot of people about the exact extent of how that makes him feel.

Consider that his own personal victory.

Auba gives Marco one of those fancy golden detector watches like the one they met over after they win the Supercup. It doesn’t seem to really work on Marco, although it goes off a lot less outside of training than the old one did.

But for example it did blink just the other day when he simply telling Auba about his weekend so whatever, Marco might just be a lost cause.

At least the golden watches look great in selfies together.

\--

“Do you want to go for a ride?” Auba asks. He’s smiling and dangling his car keys from his extended index finger like nothing’s out of the ordinary.

Marco checks his watch. It really _is_ half past eleven in the night, he isn’t just imagining it. Peering past Auba’s shoulder, Marco can see the golden car in his driveway – it’s so polished that it looks like it’s glowing on its own in the dark.

It’s a very intriguing sight, but even more so is Auba with the cheeky look in his eyes and the tight black shirt he’s wearing.

“Come on,” Auba says, throwing the keys a few centimetres into the air and catching them again. “Do you want to? Go for a ride?”

“Bro, it’s almost midnight!”

Auba shrugs. “Bro,” he replies coyly.

Marco opens his mouth to say _no, I have a medical exam tomorrow morning_ , and what comes out sounds very distinctly like “Yes.”

_Truth._

Auba beams and grabs Marco by his sleeve. He doesn’t seem to mind that Marco is in sweat pants and a ratty old sleeping shirt or that his hair looks like an absolute ginger mess, and Marco doesn’t mind that it’s in the middle of the goddamn night and that he left the light on inside his house.

Auba drives them around a number of turns until they end up on a motorway, where they just speed along in the night, lights gliding past them. But Marco isn’t looking out of the window, he’s looking at Auba’s profile illuminated by the dash lighting.

“Where are we going?”

“Dunno,” Auba replies, grinning. “Just wanted to take you somewhere.”

“But where?”

Marco rearranges his limbs enough to put his feet on the dash. He ends up awkwardly folded together, trying to make it look like that was exactly what he wanted.

“Bitch, I said I dunno!” Auba says and swats at Marco. He frowns for a moment, then, “Wanna get McDonalds though?”

 _No, because it’s against our diet plan,_ would be a pretty big lie. So a very bleary-eyed employee gets the pleasure of international football stars Reus and Aubameyang turning up in her drive-through in the middle of the night.

They eat their food sitting on the hood of Auba’s car, all cliché star-gazing in the teenage movie that is Marco’s life, except they can’t see any stars because of the light pollution.

“Can I ask you something?” Marco says around a bit of cheeseburger. He’s shivering a bit in the night because he only brought a thin sweatshirt to this trip.

In retaliation, Auba also chews at Marco with his mouth open, then he nods. “Go ahead.”

“Your watch – ” Marco starts, picking at the salad in his burger, “your soulmate?”

He _used_ to be able to form full sentences.

Auba steals a fry from the box between Marco’s knees and shakes his head.

“Nah. Not yet.”

Marco lights up and says, “You wouldn’t believe how glad I am about that,” in a rush before he can stop himself. It’s dumb, but. _Truth._

Auba almost seems to choke on the bite of fry he’s swallowing, but then he composes himself – hesitates just for a second - leans over and kisses Marco. It’s just a peck that happens so quickly that Marco can’t even process it before Auba has already turned away bashfully, smiling to himself.

“No, no, no,” Marco says quietly, “I’m not letting you off that easy,” and tugs at Auba’s shirt until he turns back and Marco can lay his mouth on Auba’s again.

It’s fast food salty, but candlelight dinner slow, and Marco has never felt his heart beat fast before.

Auba slides his hands up and down Marco’s arms during the kiss which is great against the cold, but makes Marco shiver for different reasons anyway.

When Auba drops Marco off at his house again, Marco feels like a kid after prom.

Didn’t get any tongue in 10th grade though.

\--

They’re good at scoring goals together, but – and no newspaper writes about this one – they’re also quite good at making out, wherever.

Kehli is definitely glad that he’s retired now, while Tuchel walks in on them first during training camp. He checks his watch, but apparently considers it enough time until the next training session as to not berate them for being unconcentrated. Mats doesn’t have much room to complain ever since Brazil anyway, so it’s really great, actually.

Marco still wears his golden Mendax watch, but he’s figured out how to turn off the lie detector option so that the watch doesn’t go off every other minute. Auba and him also find out that there seems to be some sort of interference between their watches that made them randomly strike up in proximity to each other.

In general, life is good. They might not be top of the league, but close enough as not to go through the winter break crying themselves to sleep.

Marco spends a lot of time with his head on Auba’s chest in a bed that they’ve expelled Gonzo from.

Funnily enough, it’s where Marco would also like to be right now, but it’s harder to maneuver Auba out of the lounge than expected.

He’s been dropping hints to get out of here for fifteen minutes, but either Auba doesn’t get it, or he’s genuinely interested in the NFL match that’s playing on silent on the flat screen, or he’s trying to rile Marco up.

But hey, two can play this game, so Marco ruffles Auba’s hair and shuffles to the other side of the room, towards the huge panorama windows.

He takes a look outside but can’t see past the reflection of his own mug on the glass. When he turns around, there’s suddenly Marcel standing frighteningly close to him.

“You know, Marco,” Marcel says, “if I wanted to watch someone fail to score for ninety minutes, I would catch a replay of our matches last season.”

Marco has to follow Marcel’s line of sight to Auba standing at the bar before he gets it.

“Shut up!” he says through closed teeth. “I’m not—“

Marcel laughs and takes a sip from his drink.

“If I wanted to listen to someone _lie_ that badly, I’d have recorded you trying to tell me you don’t find me attractive two years ago.”

Marco gasps. “Listen,” he starts earnestly, then he dissolves into laughter. “Alright, alright, I’m gonna talk to him again.”

He claps Marcel on the back and makes his way across the room.

“I might not be into this whole soulmate business, but I have two eyes,” Marcel calls after him. “Just saying.”

That was probably supposed to be another dig at his lying abilities, but Marco doesn’t really get it. After a couple of years, the jokes around that do get a bit old.

“You, me, bed, now,” Marco says to Auba, and Auba raises his eyebrows.

“What a shitty pick-up line.”

Marco grins wide. “Well, did it work?”

Auba rolls his eyes and nods towards the door of the elevator.

They have hard time even making it back to their room, but they manage because they don’t particularly want to be caught pants-down in the middle of a hotel hallway.

Auba fumbles with the keycard while trying to kiss Marco at the same time. Marco hears Auba swear under his breath in French, and suddenly something washes over Marco when they finally fall through the door together. Maybe it's because of what Marcel said down in the lounge.

“Tell me a lie,” Marco says, but Auba doesn’t seem to understand, because he just hums, slides a hand under Marco’s shirt and nudges him against the wall behind him.

The door closes with a click.

“Tell me a lie,” Marco repeats in German, as if Auba would get it better that way. He still doesn’t reply and Marco figures it must all get lost in translation between his own mouth and Auba’s mouth on his neck. No complaining from his side, of course.

Marco decides to just shut up and let his insecurities rest. He slumps back against the wall, drawing Auba flush against him.

Auba fumbles around with the waistband of Marco’s shorts for what feels like an eternity, like, come on, they’re elastic, no zipper, it can’t be that hard, come on, come on, come on.

Then suddenly the elastic snaps back against Marco’s stomach and Auba whispers right into Marco’s ear, repeating the words, “Tell me a lie.”

Marco swallows, breathes slowly.

“I-” he starts, but doesn’t come any further. “You-“ he tries again, same result. The lines on Marco’s mendaxmeter find a jumping rhythm.

There are a thousand thoughts inside Marco’s head right now, and none of them are lies. The only thing that surprises Marco is how little it surprises him.

Everything falls into place now, and fucking Bremer, fucking Freud-wannabe Bremer never had a clue about the important things he could have taught them.

Auba laughs against Marco’s neck, too loud in Marco’s ear, just perfect.

“Me too,” he says and finally sticks his hand in Marco’s shorts.

_Truth._

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, you there in the back? ... How this would work in the real world? Really good question, that's a really good question! I will pass that on to the responsible department.
> 
> Twitter over [here](http://twitter.com/kissthecrest/), tumblr over [here](http://lahmly.tumblr.com/), feelings all over the place. Hope you enjoyed reading!


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